The Climb

The second book in Gordon Korman's Everest trilogy, The Climb follows the SummitQuest expedition as four teenagers and four adults attempt to put the youngest climber ever on top of Mount Everest. The prologue foreshadows that the summit will prove fatal for one of the four young climbers.

Thirteen-year-old Dominic Alexis, the youngest and smallest team member, catches his first glimpse of Everest from the airplane window. His teammates include Norman "Tilt" Crowley, a powerful climber obsessed with the fame a summit record would bring; Sammi Moon, a fearless thrill seeker; and Perry Noonan, a reluctant climber whose uncle, Joe Sullivan, is the president and founder of their corporate sponsor, Summit Athletic. Perry is on the team only because of his uncle's influence.

In Kathmandu, expedition leader Cap Cicero, a legendary mountaineer, introduces the teens to key team members: Babu Pemba, the Sirdar, or head of the Sherpas (the high-altitude guides and porters essential to Himalayan climbing); Dr. Andrea Oberman, the expedition doctor; and Lenny "Sneezy" Tkakzuk, a cameraman. Their goal is to break the record held by Ethan Zaph, the youngest person to summit Everest. While exploring the city, Dominic meets Ethan at a Buddhist temple. Dominic reveals that his older brother, Chris Alexis, was cut from the team for being too old to break the record. Ethan is alarmed by Dominic's youth and warns him to know when to quit.

The team flies to the village of Lukla and begins a ten-day acclimatization trek toward Base Camp at 17,600 feet. Tilt is secretly under contract with the National Daily newspaper to provide insider details about the expedition. He targets Dominic in his reports, hoping negative press about the boy's age will pressure the team to remove him, clearing Tilt's path to the record and the fame and fortune it would bring.

During the trek, Dominic develops High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE), a dangerous condition in which fluid accumulates in the lungs. He is evacuated to a lower-altitude clinic and treated in a Gamow bag, a pressurized enclosure that simulates lower altitude. A local doctor insists Dominic should go home, but Cicero privately keeps the possibility of climbing open, unwilling to count the boy out.

The rest of the team reaches Base Camp. Perry and Sammi visit the camp of This Way Up, the expedition Ethan is climbing with, and meet Nestor Ali, a journalist who writes humorous articles about Everest. Meanwhile, Dominic recovers remarkably fast. During a visit to a monastery, an elderly lama points at Dominic and speaks of a vision: The boy is surrounded by "shiny coils." Dominic wonders whether the coils represent climbing ropes or hospital tubes. He carries a glass vial of Dead Sea sand from his brother Chris, meant to be left on the summit.

The team begins acclimatization trips through the Khumbu Icefall, a perilous labyrinth of collapsing ice towers called seracs and deep crevasses spanned by aluminum ladders. On one descent, a massive serac collapses just as Sammi clips onto a fixed line, or anchored climbing rope. The anchor snaps and she plummets 150 feet before Babu redirects her fall, saving her life. When Dr. Oberman brings Dominic back to Base Camp, he enters the Icefall alone. He encounters Sherpas carrying loads, and when Pasang, a Sherpa from This Way Up, breaks a crampon (a spiked boot attachment for gripping ice), Dominic volunteers to carry his load to Camp One. Cicero discovers Dominic has been hauling loads for days and is furious, but he cannot deny the boy looks strong, his extra time at lower altitude having given him superior acclimatization.

At Camp Two in the Western Cwm, a high canyon between Everest and neighboring peaks, Cicero learns the National Daily has published more damaging stories about Dominic. The team suspects Ethan; Tilt, the actual leaker, fans suspicion toward him. Cicero threatens to remove anyone caught feeding information to the press. The climbers also share summit keepsakes; Nestor plans to bring a Slinky toy, reasoning it could walk down the far side of the mountain.

The team pushes to Camp Three at 24,000 feet on the Lhotse Face, a mile-high wall of ice. Cicero declares them ready for a summit bid. Back at Base Camp, Nepalese government officials arrive with a faxed photo of Dominic. The team hides him, and Cicero tells the officials the boy is in the valley. A clear weather window opens, and SummitQuest ascends to Camp Four on the South Col at 26,000 feet, the threshold of the Death Zone, where the body deteriorates rapidly without supplemental oxygen.

That evening, a crisis erupts: Ethan, Nestor, and Pasang are stranded near the summit of Lhotse, a neighboring peak, after running out of rope, and a rockfall has knocked Nestor unconscious. Cicero and the three other adults depart to search the Lhotse Face, leaving the teens alone. Pasang then staggers into Camp Four and reveals that Ethan, who was climbing without supplemental oxygen by choice, carried the unconscious Nestor up the northeast ridge before collapsing from exhaustion. The guides are searching the wrong side of the mountain. Dominic declares that the teens must attempt the rescue themselves, and Sammi disconnects the radio to prevent Cicero from ordering them back.

The four rope themselves in pairs and ascend a 500-foot ice wall to reach the ridge. Perry methodically places ice screws despite the thin ice, his ropework proving essential. On the ridge, they pass a mummified dead climber. At a bare-rock notch, Perry hammers in his Uncle Joe's prized piton, a metal spike used for anchoring to rock, sacrificing the keepsake meant for the summit to save lives. They find Ethan barely coherent over Nestor's unconscious body and hook Ethan to a spare oxygen rig. The rockfall drove Nestor's own crampon points through his backpack into his back.

The descent is grueling. Ethan steps onto a cornice, an overhanging shelf of wind-blown snow, which collapses beneath him. Tilt throws himself onto a boulder and single-handedly holds Ethan's weight, hauling him back up and saving his life. When they reach the top of the ice wall, there is not enough rope to lower the unconscious Nestor. Dominic improvises, pulling free Perry's earlier fixed ropes as extensions. When the final length is missing, he positions himself behind Nestor toboggan-style and cuts the rope, sending them on a terrifying glissade down the ice to the South Col.

Cicero and the guides have returned to Camp Four. Dr. Oberman takes charge of Nestor and notices remnants of his shattered Slinky draped around Dominic's wind suit, silver spirals glistening in the light, fulfilling the lama's vision of "shiny coils." Nestor is evacuated by helicopter to Kathmandu.

A violent blizzard descends on the summit ridge, and the Sherpas fear the monsoon has arrived, ending the climbing season. Nestor calls from the hospital to thank Dominic for saving his life. Ethan apologizes for doubting Dominic, telling him he "more than belong[s]" (150) on Everest. Dominic reflects that the team reached 27,700 feet on Lhotse and believes they can summit if given another chance. The book ends with snow still falling on Base Camp and the summit bid's fate uncertain, setting up the trilogy's concluding volume, The Summit.